Facebook customers filed a joint lawsuit on the 19^th of October 2010 against Zynga for sharing Facebook data. One of the attorneys publicly stated that Zynga has supposedly infringed on federal laws regarding privacy by sharing the user data of players along with other online companies.

The lawsuit is intended to compensate financially the abused customers and to address the situation of preventing ‘continued privacy abuses’, whereas Zynga replies by stating that these accusations ill-founded.

This lawsuit comes to light around the same time Facebook faces major public scrutiny, after it was revealed that some of its third party apps were leaking user data to advertisers.  Facebook’s facing a legal probe itself as a result, with its CEO Mark Zuckerberg being questioned by Congress regarding what information he had before the data leaks were uncovered by the Wall Street Journal.

Zynga is one of the most popular social game developers on Facebook, with five of its apps dominating the top 10 list on the social network.  The game developer has seen significant growth in the past couple of years, and is working on scaling its global expansion.  As gaming is targeted as the next big thing for advertising and virtual goods sales, Zynga’s gaming platform is in a good position for reaping the benefits of extending its network beyond Facebook’s walls.